


Death, Poorly Timed

by forever_ioand_ever



Category: Forever (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 17:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4714817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forever_ioand_ever/pseuds/forever_ioand_ever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lucas finds Henry in a most compromising position, and Henry finds Lucas more knowledgeable than first presumed. Oneshot. Not this bombastically written. Also, a part 2 has mysteriously appeared...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to Annie Hawkclaw for the prompt on this one, I had fun with it!(: Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Also, I make a very small mention of Oscar from my eponymous oneshot. It's not necessary to read it to know what's going on, it's just a passing comment, but if you're curious, go check it out(:

She had stood him up. Again. He looked up from his watch, out onto the waters of the East River, seeing the sunset as a fiery manifestation of his anger. He clenched a fist around the object in his hand and forcefully whipped it out into the bay. The dinner coupon fluttered gently into the river, a 20% discount never to be used.

Lucas stepped back from the pier's railing and, sighing to himself, collapsed into a park bench. He really thought Jessie would be different. He'd felt something more with her, a stronger connection that seemed it just might last. Even if they only had gone on one successful date. Apparently he was wrong.

Lucas listened to the gentle crash and churn of the bay's waves below him. They lulled him into a drowsy calm. He found himself sitting, staring, listening, but not really thinking. Not until a rustle of leaves behind him jolted him from his stupor.

{•*•*•*•}

Henry burst out of the river, gasping for air. With every breath he tried to take in, he felt something was still suffocating him, though his attacker was long gone. He blew a harsh breath from his mouth and dislodged the damp paper that had covered it and precluded his breathing.

"Bloody rubbish," he said, berating whoever had tossed the pollutant in the river. He reached back out for it and pulled it and himself out of the river and to the nearest large foliage.

He tensed his muscled and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to keep warm as best as he could. When the shivers had begun to subside, he pulled out the paper that had almost suffocated him again. A coupon for one of the city's ubiquitous pizza parlors. Henry crumpled the coupon for the second time in its adventurous night, then discreetly reached his hand out of the bush to drop it in a trash receptacle.

He tried to be as quiet as possible, for the bin was next to an occupied bench. He released the coupon, and immediately a large set of hands were locked on his own.

{•*•*•*•}

Lucas turned at the papery noise of leaves rustling. He watched in some combination of fascination, horror, and awe as a human hand extended out from the foliage and dropped something into the trashcan. He wasnt sure which of the three emotions was the one that led him to reach out and grab the appendage, but something in his brain prompted him to do so, and now his only true emotion was fear, for he was holding a very real, very alive, slightly damp human limb.

Inside the bush, Henry struggled to remain calm. Why did he have to be so obsessive about pollution in the first place? What exactly did one do when their hand was grabbed while they were recovering from their latest death hiding in a bush nude?

His only idea was to get a look at his hand's captor. Trying his best not to move his visible limb, Henry knelt down and found an angle at which he could see out of the bush, and into the face of Lucas Wahl.

Henry wasnt sure whether to be relieved or even more worried. Lucas did, after all, have an explanation of the skinny-dipping scenario to go on, but he probably wouldn't shut up about finding Henry naked at the river tomorrow at work.

He had to take his chances. He could easily sway Lucas into not reporting the incident to the precinct, at least not formally reporting it, and Abe happened to be out of town on a buying trip, so Henry really didn't have anyone to call. His decision made, he pulled his arm back and sharply whispered his assistant's name.

Lucas ricocheted like a boomerang, firsts being pulled in by the mysterious hand, then releasing his grip from the apparated appendage, stumbling back to where he wa originally standing. He thought he'd heard his name, and looked to the bush fearfully.

"Lucas," the bush whispered again.

"H...hello?" The young man stuttered.

"Don't be frightened, Lucas, it is only I."

The odd but nonetheless proper grammatical structure of the bush's reply, along with its strong British accent and the head and shoulders that hesitantly popped out of the top revealed to Lucas that it was indeed only his boss.

"Doc Morgan?" He asked dubiously, though he could now clearly see the man in the bush, who rolled his eyes and gave a nod.

"What are you doing in a bush?"

"I... Erm, I seem to have gone sleepwalking again."

Lucas's eyes widened. "You mean you're... You're..."

"Yes, Lucas." Henry sighed with exasperation. "I am currently nude."

Lucas stepped back, bewilderment filling his features. "Do you... I mean... Wha-"

"Do you have a car nearby?" Henry asked, halting Lucas' erratic stuttering.

"Uh, yeah, but... You..."

"Give me your jacket."

"What does that have to do with-"

"Jacket. Now." Henry emphatically demanded. He reached his hand out of the bush. Lucas, utterly bewildered, shrugged out of his windbreaker and handed it to his boss. Jacket in hand, Henry slid back into the bush and reemerged wearing the windbreaker. It was a bit long on him due to the doctors' height difference, which Henry had been hoping on, so it covered his body sufficiently, though not acceptably.

Lucas stared in shock as his boss emerged from the bush indeed only wearing the windbreaker. For te first time in knowing the other man, Lucas finally saw Henry slouching in his posture; it made the windbreaker diminutively longer.

With a turn of his head and a small motion of his hands, Henry directed Lucas out of the park and into his parked car at a significantly fast pace. Lucas found himself running on autopilot, not able to formulate a coherent thought from the curious chaos wreaking through his night.

Only when they were both in the car and its engine had hummed to life did Lucas speak.

"Uh, Doc?" He asked, drumming his fingertips rapidly along the steering wheel. "What now?"

"Take me home." Henry commanded, adding a "please" as a genteel afterthought.

"I would... But Doc, I dunno where you live."

"Corner of Suffolk and Stanton." Henry begrudgingly offered.

Directions given, Lucas began to drive around and out of the parking lot. E tried his best to avoid thinking about Henry's nudity, but couldn't shake the disturbing, un-Doctor-Morgan-like concept from his mind.

"One other thing, Lucas," Henry added as they pulled out into the avenues. "If anyone calls you and the call has anything to do with me or my well-being, say nothing."

"Ookay...," Lucas replied dubiously.

Boss and associate did not say another word for the rest of the ride. When Lucas dropped Henry off, he wasnt quite sure what to do with himself, so he offered a small wave and a halfhearted smile. Henry barely acknowledged him and went inside the antique shop. Both men fell into a restless sleep that night, for entirely different reasons.

{•*•*•*•}

"Morning, Doc," Lucas offered as his boss entered the autopsy suite. He was trying not to be completely awkward after the events of the past night And the information he'd gotten this morning on top of that, so he continue to assiduously pick at the oddities in the muscle tissue in front of him.

"Same to you, Lucas," Henry replied. He removed his jacket and scarf and placed them on the back of his office chair. Grabbing a monogrammed white coat from the wall hook, Henry then suited up in his doctoral gear and returned to the autopsy room.

It was still early, albeit not as early as was his usual arrival. After the chaos of the last night, Henry felt he deserved an extra hour of shut-eye. All said to say that Lucas was he only other soul in the morgue, though a few more bodies were also present. Henry walked over to Lucas and leaned over his shoulder as he continued to pull the odd fibers from the muscle tissue.

"I returned your jacket to your locker." He whispered, out of paranoia more than anything.

Lucas subtly nodded, too focused on the task at hand to move his head more than a mere fraction of an inch. He plucked another strange fiber from The tissue and placed it with the others he'd gathered over the past half hour. As he heard Henry begin to walk away, he dropped his tweezers and turned to the doctor.

"Hey, uh, I don't wanna pry or anything, but just to let you know, Jo was down here looking for you earlier..."

Henry spun around. "What did you tell her, Lucas?"

"Nothing!" Lucas replied defensively, startled by Henry's ferocity over the subject. Henry's demeanor seemed to calm, and, he didn't know why, but the calm prompted Lucas to mutter, "What she told me didn't make any sense anyway."

"And what did she tell you?" Henry asked, taking a step forward. His voice was quiet, afraid, his eyes wide and almost vulnerable. "Tell me everything."

"She said you two were out on a lead when you ran ahead. She tried to catch up but she couldn't find you. She thought she heard a struggle in one of the alleys and went to see if it was you and if you were okay. When she got back there, The suspect was standing there staring at the ground. She arrested him and started searching for you and she couldn't find you and the suspect was saying he'd killed you and you were gone and then Jo was panicking and basically they're scouring the city for your remains."

Henry leaned on the nearest table, head in his hands. He let out an exasperated groan, his palms muffling the sound.

"You're kidding me."

"She really thinks you're dead, Doc."

Henry looked back at him with a deadpan stare.

"Kicked the can."

Henry's brow raised.

"Pushing up daisies."

"For the love of all that is well and good, please stop!" Henry cried, returning his head to his hands.

"Someone's a little touchy." Commented the assistant.

Henry groaned inwardly, muttering quietly to himself. "This is just fantastic."

"Doc?"

"What now, Lucas?" Henry whined, straightening his posture. The only way this day could possibly be going worse for him was if he actually died.

"I, uh, I was thinking about what Jo said and all..." He stammered, dancing his fingers inbetween each other.

"And?" Henry begged, cocking his head to the side like a curious puppy, though his face reflected a boiling frustration and anger.

"And, well, uh, she said you disappeared at seven o clock, and I found you in the bush five minutes later, but you would've been up in the Bronx then and you can't get from there to the East River Park that quickly unless you're superman or something..."

Henry took that thought back. This could get worse.

At that moment, the phone began to ring. Henry pointed Lucas toward the device. The young man hesitantly picked up the wall phone.

"Hello?"

"You what?"

"He what?"

"Oh my God, Jo... Thank you for letting me know."

Lucas slowly hung the phone back on the wall. He looked back at Henry with a lost, confused, mournful expression.

"The... The suspect had pictures."

"Of what‽" Henry demanded, grabbing Lucas' shoulders and desperately clinging to them.

"Pictures of you. Pictures of you... Dead."

This definitely could get worse.

{•*•*•*•}

"Okay, a little to the left... Tilt your chin up... A little more, little more... Perfect!"

"Are you absolutely sure you can make this look real?" Henry asked as he craned his neck in the uncomfortable position Lucas had directed him.

"Part of being a former film major was studying entry-level special effects makeup, and I see bruises everyday. I think I can make a very realistic thumbprint on your neck. Now, no taking till I finish this. You're throwing off my vibe."

Lucas dabbed the makeup on Henry's neck, spread it, brushed it, and finally tapped it with the pad of his thumb.

"And there you have it! Strangulation bruising, to a T!"

Henry rose from his chair and looked at himself in the antique mirror. Fingertip-shaped purple blotches dotted his neck in perfect placement for a strangulation done by hand. The bruises' colors ebbed and flowed according to the pressures that had been placed on his neck the night before, though Lucas didn't know that was truly the case.

"My God, Lucas, I look like a walking corpse! The detail and the patterning is phenomenal!"

Henry went to touch his finger to the false bruises. Lucas reached out and grabbed his hand back.

"No touching. The powder is very delicate. I did not just spend my lunch break painting bruises on your neck for you to wipe them away!"

Henry pulled his hand from Lucas' grasp and extended it for a handshake.

"Thank you for making me look almost dead." He smiled, the juxtaposition of situation and emotion quite odd, and not going unnoticed by Lucas.

"Never thought I'd hear that, but you're welcome?" He shrugged. He took Henry's hand and wasnt at all surprised by the firmness of his handshake. Lucas pulled a little twist of his own, though, wrapping Henry in a hug with his free arm. After an awkward few seconds, Lucas let go.

"Guess you're not the bro-hug type."

"If that is what that-" Henry waved his hands around trying to encircle the concept of the physical contact "-was, then no, no I am not. But I must confess I am something else. A deal is a deal, after all."

"Aw, Henry, you don't have to be so shy about it. We'll still accept you just the way you are." Lucas said, almost putting his arm around Henry's shoulder but thinking better of it.

Henry lifted a brow. How could Lucas possibly know what he was going to say?

"There's lots of people like you out there, it's pretty cool now- no one freaking out on you and stuff. And when the right guy comes along, we'll-"

"You really think I am about to tell you I'm homosexual?" Henry asked, cutting off Lucas' well wishes.

"Wait, so you're not coming out of the closet?"

"Heavens, no. Not at all. When I promised, albeit begrudgingly, that I was going to explain my situation to you, I meant the whole Jo thinks I died in the Bronx but you found me naked in the East River at the same time conundrum. You might want to sit down for this."

Henry motioned to the plush furnishings of his living room. He and Lucas had come to the apartment to do the macabre makeup in order to avoid the others, Jo especially, from seeing that the bruises were fake. Henry knew the only way to keep his secret intact was to somehow get fatal bruising on his neck, and Lucas had both the medical and cosmetological knowledge required to pull it off. He'd already dug himself in a hole concerning his secret and his assistant, but had hoped Lucas would ask no questions of the request. He'd ended up, however, being bargained into telling Lucas the truth.

"What I am about to say does not leave this apartment, Lucas. Do you understand me?"

Lucas nodded.

"You can't tell anyone what I am about to tell you. Not your family or your girlfriend and especially not Jo, Hanson, and the Lieutenant."

"What about Oscar?"

Henry sighed. Of course he would ask to tell his pet rat. The fact that he was about to reveal this to someone who had a pet rat and talked to it as a fellow human being on a regular basis thoroughly disconcerted him.

"Yes, Lucas. You can tell the rat. But no one else. Not a soul."

"Got it, Doc. Hit me."

Henry took a deep breath, fighting the voice in his mind that he'd spent the past two centuries training to keep himself from revealing the truth.

"My name is Henry Morgan. I was born on September 19, 1779. I was fatally shot on April 7, 1814. I should have died, but I didn't. Rather, I did die, I just did not remain that way."

Before Lucas could find any words to say, Henry unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt, revealing the extensive dermal damages left on his chest by the not-so-fatal shot. Lucas cautiously extended a hand, his eyes wide with confusion and bewilderment. Henry moved closer and allowed Lucas's fingers to study the wound.

"It's real." He whispered, blinking profusely.

"You know I know nothing of special-effects wound creation."

Lucas slowly leaned back into the chair, letting the cushions envelop his body as he sunk into their clutches, as he let his mind begin to try to wrap around what Henry was telling him.

"Every time I die, i come back in water, nude. So all of those public indecency charges, I really should have been dead.

"Which means that Jo was right, and I did die in the Bronx last night. The pictures she has must have been taken before my body disappeared. Only, because of my condition, I reappeared in the East River instead of making an appearance in the afterlife."

"So you're... You're..." Lucas puzzled over what exactly would describe his boss's condition, still struggling with wrapping his mind around all that had just been told to him, let alone putting a word to it.

"Immortal. I am immortal, Lucas. I've spent the past two hundred years trying to figure out how and why i am this way, and all I've come to understand is that stabbings and shootings aren't nearly the most brutal ways to go."

"That's..." Lucas began. The confusion on his face started to melt, and was replaced with... Adoration?

"That's so awesome! You're like a superhero or something!"

A long, frustrated sigh escaped Henry's mouth. He was definitely going to regret this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! I didn't think I'd be continuing this story, but a lot of you said you wanted more, and my muse agreed, and thus we have a sort-of sequel event. enjoy!(: Also a shout-out to Kythe42's story Erratic Sensitivities... I kind of took that idea for Henry's death in this story.

In death, it is often said that one's life flashes before their eyes. As the lights of the truck barreled closer and closer to him, Henry's mind flashed a much surprisingly shorter distance back in time...

_The first one had been innocuous enough. He'd noticed that his body had a tendency to vacillate upon his tolerance to the stings, and he hadn't recently experienced any sort of reaction to one. So of course his latest incarnation would make up for all that lost anaphylaxis and fall dead within minutes of that imbecilic buzzing insect sticking him in the arm._

_Abe had just wrapped up a sale when he called from the river. The timing was genuinely impeccable and considering the nonviolent circumstances, Abe had been all too happy to help._

_The second was quite a bit more dangerous. He really shouldn't have gone up there in the first place, but as lacking a self-preservation instinct as he was, he absolutely had to test the security of the poorly-welded trusses. Waiting until Jo, Hanson, and the CSUs were all focused away from the particular joint of which he questioned the stability, he scurried up and stepped out onto the beam, which was as insecure as he'd imagined, and it and he himself toppled to the ground._

_Abe was much more begrudging in his assistance that time. Considering Henry had purposed to bring it upon himself with the reckless behavior, Abe felt more like the father reprimanding a wayward son than the familial relationship being the other way around. Plus, he not only had to return Henry home for his clothes, he had to drive him across the city to the precinct. Abe wasn't having any more accidents this day._

_The third time was just pure luck. Bad luck, that is. Henry was biking back to the shop, much to his son's chagrin, when a dog ran out in the street. Henry pulled the brakes abruptly, too abruptly, and found himself flying through the air and landing on the pavement with a sickening cracking thud. He'd bled out within a minute._

_Abe's sympathy for his resurrected father had completely run out._

_"A dog? You're here because a dog ran out in front of you?"_

_"Yes, Abraham. For the thousandth time, the dog came out of nowhere, and to avoid hitting it my only choice was to quickly apply the brake. From there the bicycle threw me, much worse than any equine has ever done, and I managed to land in such a way that my skull and multiple vertebrae shattered."_

_"Bikes are the skinniest transportation used by modern mankind. You could've swerved."_

_"I couldn't know which way the dog was going. To be safest, I needed to stop and let the dog go."_

_"To be safest? Henry, you killed yourself to avoid hitting a dog with a bicycle!"_

_Awkward silence._

_"It is quite fortunate, though, that all of these incidents happened to me and not someone else."_

_"How on earth is your dying three times in one day a fortunate event?"_

_"If it had been anyone else, I would be doing three more autopsies tomorrow. There would be three less people walking these streets. I took the sacrifice for them, in a way, but I remain."_

_"True, true. Just... Henry, stop dying. You call me one more time with some stupid story about how you were crossing the street and got your foot caught in a pothole and long story short you ended up run over by a semi truck, I'm not picking you up."_

_Abe, _Henry sighed to himself as he resigned himself to his fate for the fourth time that day, _was going to be furious. _____

____{******}_ _ _ _

____At least it is dark this time, Henry thought to himself as he dragged his body out of the East River. Just as he had every other time that day, he ran over to the bushes beside the park's lone pay phone and huddled underneath the foliage, scouring the dirt and dead leaves for enough change to place a call. Having been there three times already in the past twenty-four hours made the penny-pickings slim to none._ _ _ _

____The cruel forces of luck were on his side again, though, and a glimmering quarter sparkled in the moonlight. Henry reached out and grabbed the coin before any passersby could notice the human hand in the bush._ _ _ _

____One call. He had one call. Abe was out with one of his many female beaus, and that on top of the all-too uncordial reaction from that afternoon's fiasco, calling his son was out of the question. Which left Henry with one hope._ _ _ _

____Lucas._ _ _ _

____{•*•*•*•*•}_ _ _ _

____"Lucas, what are you doing here?" Jo tried her best to not sound exasperated, but this was a pretty crazy case, and she'd thought Henry would jump on the chance to take it. That, and he'd do ten thousand times better of a job than Lucas, whose first and best field examination consisted of four words: "For starters, she's dead."_ _ _ _

____"You requested an ME?" Lucas walked over to where Jo was standing, his brow raised in a curious confusion. "And I happen to be one. Now where's this-"_ _ _ _

____He stopped speaking at the sight of the blood. It wasn't just pooled around the body as would be expected, it was painted around the body. In the shape of a four-leaf clover. Faint letters were visible in the splatter on the walls, as if they had been posted on the wall before the murder and removed. Lucas tried to read the letters, coming up with a final solution of "Luck of the Draw."_ _ _ _

____Luck of the draw, indeed._ _ _ _

____Lucas knelt down to the body, that of a male slightly younger than himself. He was careful to avoid the dried blood staining the concrete ground as he drew closer to the body to study it._ _ _ _

____"Well, he has been exsanguinated," Lucas began, drawing out the word "exsanguinated" as if he either wanted to prove his merit with its use or he simply didn't know how to pronounce it. "The wound that produced most of the splatter would be here, in the aorta. Not a lot of blood would be left after that, and what was left appears to be in this…" he paused to find an apt description and found nothing but dry sarcasm. "...lovely piece of artwork."_ _ _ _

____Jo winced at the description. She took a step back from the body and dubiously watched Lucas pick his way around the body. "Anything else?"_ _ _ _

____"Yeah…" Lucas lifted the bloodied skull. "See, there's this contusion-"_ _ _ _

____The room was suddenly echoing with some sort of psychedelic sci-fi theme music. Lucas sheepishly removed a glove and pulled the iPhone from his back pocket. Jo shook her head as he looked at the screen while still holding a lifeless human head in the other._ _ _ _

____"I've gotta take this," He apologized, setting the head back down in the clover of blood and stepping out of the room. As soon as he was out of earshot, he whispered into the device, "Is this for real, Doc?"_ _ _ _

____"Unfortunately, yes," came the begrudging reply from Henry, who was silently thanking the city planning commision for planting a tall bush within cord's length of the East River Park payphone, the same bush Lucas had found him in a few months prior, in exaclty the state he was currently. Revived, revitalized, and dripping wet without the added hindrance of clothing. Though he'd much rather trade being waterlogged in his suit than have lost it to the cruel forces that controlled his endless fate. "How soon can you get out here, Lucas?"_ _ _ _

____"Uh, probably fifteen minutes or so," Lucas replied, looking over his shoulder to where Jo, joined now by Hanson and some other detective he didn't recognize, were observing the crime scene. Every so often, she would steal a glance in his direction. "If Jo doesn't kill me first. We're on a really… bizarre scene and…"_ _ _ _

____"And the good detective would appreciate it if you would escort myself there to help them with it, would she not?"_ _ _ _

____"I guess… Yeah, that'll probably fly with her. You should've seen the look on her face when it was me coming through the door and not you. She'll probably sing my praises if I leave to bring you back."_ _ _ _

____"It appears you have your answer," Lucas could hear Henry's smug smile through the wire. "I'll be where you found me last time."_ _ _ _

____It was Henry that hung up, not Lucas. He was in a combination of glee that Henry had continued to trust him with such a monumental secret and shock that this was actually happening to him. Really, how many people were called to pick up an immortal after he'd died?_ _ _ _

____He looked up and began walking back out to the scene, conveniently at one of the moments Jo glanced in his direction. "That was Henry," he offered in explanation._ _ _ _

____"Is he on his way?" Jo asked. "I mean, not that I'm not glad to have you here too…"_ _ _ _

____"But Henry's the king of the macabre. I know. It's cool." He offered meekly, if a bit awkwardly. "Actually, he doesn't have a ride here, so he asked if I could come get him. So I'll be back. With Henry. Okay, bye."_ _ _ _

____Lucas left the room before it occurred to Jo to wonder why Henry would askhim over her._ _ _ _

____{*****}_ _ _ _

____The East River Park was officially the most awkward place in the city._ _ _ _

____Lucas stood next to the bush, silently waiting for Henry to dry and dress, all the while trying to act nonchalant and keep the park police from seeing the half-naked man in the foliage. Lucas' brand of nonchalance was heavily influenced by 90's sitcoms and involved a not-so-pleasant sound that was supposed to be a casual whistle._ _ _ _

____"Never, in two centuries of walking this earth, have I observed anyone genuinely acting casual in the manner you are conducting yourself." Henry popped out of the bush, then through the leaves and branches, wearing an old pair of sweatpants associated with some college he'd never heard of but assumed was Lucas' undergraduate alma mater, and a standard navy t-shirt that was a smidge too tight. He was a little bit paranoid about whether or not his wound was noticeable under the fabric, but chalked it up to the feeling of dampness that didn't go away for an hour or so after he emerged. "But I have not been arrested, so thank you, Lucas."_ _ _ _

____The two began walking back to Lucas' car, which sat alone in the parking lot, lit by a weak incandescent streetlamp. "Why didn't you just call Abe?" Lucas asked as they walked._ _ _ _

____"Well, for one, he's out on a date, and I suppose you wouldn't want your father interrupting that. Secondly, I've had quite an eventful day as it is."_ _ _ _

____"Eventful?" They reached the car. Lucas fiddled with the keys in his door, opened it, and unlocked the passenger door for Henry. They slid in the car and, for Henry's sake, Lucas turned on the heat. Even in spring, the river was still quite chilly, add in half an hour of dampness, and it was a given that Henry would be grateful. He was dry now and the heat, hopefully, would dry the last wet starnds of his hair._ _ _ _

____"I may have visited the river a few times already," Henry offered evasively. He kept his eyes focused on the cityscape whizzing by, hoping that he would kill the curiosity before the curiosity killed Lucas. Who was he kidding, this was Lucas Wahl, the most curious cat in the bag._ _ _ _

____Lucas looked over at his passenger. "How?"_ _ _ _

____"Oh, nothing major. Bee sting, unstable steel beam, bicycle wreck, and what I believe was a drunk driver. If not, he's quite unsteady when sober, though I am not one to speak, seeing as my driving skills are equal or worse to those of the driver that killed me."_ _ _ _

____"Nothing major? You died and resurrected. Not just once, four times. In one day! That's, like, legendary, Doc! What was it like? Was it epic? Did you save the city? An old lady crossing the street? A lost puppy? Did you-"_ _ _ _

____"Lucas." Henry found himself using that tone of voice he'd for so long only used on a misbehaving Abe. "I am not one of your comic book characters."_ _ _ _

____"Graphic novels." Lucas corrected. "They're called graphic novels."_ _ _ _

____"Very well, then, " the doctor sighed. "I am not one of your "graphic novel" characters. I am just a regular man with an unconventional relationship with death. I'm not a superhero, and contrary to what you may think, my deaths are usually quite random, awkward, and even clumsy. Take, for instance, the bicycle. The dog got away fine, I shattered my vertebrae and bled out on the pavement. All because, at that moment, a stray hound decided it would be an opportune time to cross the street. Very rarely have I died a noble death, though I excel at dying the senseless ones."_ _ _ _

____"You're lucky you're immortal," Lucas muttered._ _ _ _

____"Have I not explained to you that this is not a blessing but-"_ _ _ _

____"A curse. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's insanely cool but you don't think so. The grass is greener and all that, I know," The light above turned green, illuminating the intersection in the eerie emerald glow. Lucas hit the accelerator and drew closer to the building in which was the latest crime scene. "I was referring to the amount of times Jo has threatened to kill you. When you disappeared at the construction site earlier, she was…" He finished the thought with a forceful sigh, there not being a word he could think of to describe Jo's lividity for that hour Henry was gone._ _ _ _

____"Well, this is the spot," Lucas declared as he parked the car outside of the building, if it hadn't been made obvious by the swarming police officers and yellow tape encircling the entrance. He and Henry alighted and made their way in, Henry's oddly casual attire and still-wet hair garnering curious glances from the law enforcement personnel. They made thier way to the back room, where Jo stood impatiently waiting for someone to examine the body surronded by a clover of blood. She actually was waiting impatiently in the anteroom holding a warm coffee close to her face; the smell and sight of the body becoming too much to handle. Her face lifted at the sight of the medical examiners making their way down the hallway._ _ _ _

____"No scarf?" Jo smirked. "And what's with the wet hair? Henry Morgan, I dragged you out of bed for this, didn't I?"_ _ _ _

____Jo Martinez was clearly gloating. And if he wanted to keep this secret as secret as possible, Henry would have to play along._ _ _ _

____"Technically, it was Lucas who did the dragging, but I presume it was at your bidding?" He began walking through the doorway, stopping short when he saw the body and the message on the wall._ _ _ _

____"Good thing you don't sleep naked anymore. It's a bit of a biohazard in there."_ _ _ _


End file.
